Author: Richard Jones

It must have been terrifying for the poor woman. At around 4pm on October 5th, 1897, Annie Tofler, of 8, William Street St. George’s-in-the-East was walking along Cable Street with her purse in her hand, when she suddenly felt […]

On July 17th, 1889, Alice McKenzie was murdered in Castle Alley, off Whitechapel High Street, and the panic and unrest that had taken place in the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper murders the previous autumn resurfaced in […]

On the morning of Saturday, 3rd December, 1898, the death took place at Claybury Lunatic Asylum of one of the “characters” of the London Police Courts. Her name was Jane Cakebread, and following her death, newspapers countrywide carried […]

One of the many theories concerning the motive behind Jack the Ripper’s killing spree in the East End of London in the autumn of 1888 is that the perpetrator was on a moral crusade to rid the streets […]

Did you see it? That flash of something moving past with great speed? I am speaking here of the first 5 months of 2018 which have absolutely shot by! But, just as time waits for no one, neither […]

In the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper murders, it is surprising how many people simply could not resist the temptation to put pen to paper and send letters to all and sundry, purporting to come from the […]

One of the theories concerning the identity of Jack the Ripper is that, by searching for “Jack” the police were on the wrong track and that they should have, in fact, been hunting for “Jill the Ripper.” Indeed, […]

When discussing the Jack the Ripper case in an historical context, there can be a tendency to focus, more or less, exclusively on the districts of Spitalfields and Whitechapel, and ignore the fact that the murders were, in […]

In early May, 1889, newspapers across the country carried a story concerning the life of Jack the Ripper victim Annie Chapman, which had been delivered as part of a sermon on the dangers of alcohol by the Reverend […]

It is noticeable that, as the Jack the Ripper murders began to increase in ferocity, in September, 1888, the newspapers struggled to convey the full horror of what was occurring in the East End of London to their […]